Chapter 119

112 MURDEJIS IN THE RUE MORGUE the Prefect, its discovery would have been a matter altogether beyond question. This functionary, however, has been thoroughly mystified, and the remote source of his defeat lies in the supposition that the Minister is a fool because he has acquired renown as a poet. All fools are poets, this the Prefect feels , and he is merely guilty of a non distributio medii in thence inferring that all poets are fools.” “But is this really the poet?” I asked. “There are two brothers, I know, and both have attained reputation in letters. The Minister, I believe, has written learnedly on the Differential Calculus. He is a mathematician and no poet.” “You are mistaken; I know him well; he is both. As poet and mathematician he would reason well ; as mere mathematician he could not have reasoned at all, and thus would have been at the mercy of the Prefect.” “You surprise me,” I said, “by these opinions, which have been contradicted by the voice of the world. You do not mean to set at naught the well-digested idea of centuries. The mathematical reason has long been regarded as the reason par excellence .” “ 77 y a a parier,’ ” replied Dupin, quoting from Chamfort, “ ‘que toute idee publique, toute convention recue , est une sottise , car die a convenu au plus grand nombre The mathematicians, I grant you, have done their best to promulgate the popular error to which you allude, and which is none the less an error for its promulgation as truth. With an art worthy a better cause, for example, they have insinuated the term ‘analysis’ into application to algebra. The French are the originators of this particular deception, but if a term is of any importance, if words derive any value from applicability, then ‘analysis’ conveys ‘algebra’ about as much as, in Latin, ‘ ambitus' implies ‘ambition,’ ‘religio’ ‘religion,’ or ‘ homines honestif a set of honorable men.”